Charity

I shot this in April of 2006, when hope still shone on Charity Hospital like a beacon. At the time I didn't do anything with it, but I remembered thinking that the surrounding clouds looked like a portent of dire warning if ever there was one. Fancy that. Now this photograph has decided it wants to speak, to scream in agony with a voice that could pierce the ears of the deaf. I am only too happy to lend it my stage.

It has become painfully clear to me now that there is no hope for Charity. LSU wants a shiny new sprawling medical complex and they don't care what historic landmarks or neighborhoods or communities stand in their way. It's been four years since Hurricane Katrina gave LSU and the State of Louisiana the Golden Opportunity to lock the doors on Charity. Since then it has languished, decaying day by day like the health of the citizens of New Orleans.

Mayor Nagin is a clueless, ineffective caricature of leadership, concerned more with lining his pockets than the well-being of this city. Governor Jindal is on the money train with his cronies and frat brothers at LSU, even though they have failed multiple times to find financing for their boondoggle. President Obama certainly could care less, otherwise he would have sliced us off a tasty hunk of that Stimulus Cheese to help solve the problem. So what can we do?

Let's die.

Winter is coming and this gives us all a great opportunity to catch pneumonia and die. And when it's time for all of us to go, let's use our last breaths to crawl to the locked and boarded cyclone fence that surrounds Charity and shuffle off this mortal coil in mass protest. That'll show 'em! Piles of corpses surrounding the building, cough drops and throat lozenges clogging the sewers like so many discarded Mardi Gras doubloons and Moon Pies, rivers of phlegm and mucous running down Tulane Avenue to the river, and in each of our hands a can of LSU brand Chicken Soup with the handwritten message, "It's not working." Is that what it would take for someone in Baton Rouge to finally wake up and do something?

Unless of course, that's exactly what they're waiting for…

I Will Be Dipped In Shit

For those of you North of the Mason-Dixon line, that's a colloquialism used in some parts of the South to express incredulity and disbelief. I use it here as I have just learned that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has vetoed SB 672, the little bill that would have given state legislators a 200+% pay raise.

Veto. Starts with a 'V' just like Victory.

In a press conference today, Jindal said both legislators and he made mistakes; theirs in giving themselves such an absurd raise and his promise to stay out of the whole mess in the first place. Hell must be having a great big snowball fight right about now. The people won one. There was no mention of Ryan Fournier's recall petition for Jindal, which has now been dropped.

The crayon-wielding, Benz-driving "author" of the bill, Ann V Duplessis, (Does the V stand for Veto?,) says she is "extremely disappointed" that Jindal "broke his word to the legislature." What she really means is that she's pissed off that he kept his word to the voters. Jim Tucker grumbled something about how the legislature needs to be fixed. No word on whether this means he plans to have his political opponents whacked. His recall is still ongoing though.

This is a day to raise a glass and toast to the will of the people, so I won't go into the recent 'mysterious' resignation of Tommy Williams, the former lobbyist tapped by Jindal to be his legislative director but lasting only six short months, nor will I go into how Jindal's Chief of Staff, (and former campaign manager,) Timmy Teepell managed to help Williams create this mess in the first place. The fashionably shaved "Timmy" was the guy responsible for screwing up Jindal's campaign finances, then not reporting the errors, then not paying the fines on time. Apparently he's also a really big Hannah Montana fan. While Bobby was calling for reform, "Timmy" was busy making phone calls arranging for free HM tickets. He even commandeered the Governor's Suite in the New Orleans Arena so he could enjoy the show in true comfort. What a freak. But I'm not going to mention any of that.

Celebrate your victory, Louisiana! They are so few and far between these days.

Jindal For Veep!

I'm serious.

Fuck recall, let's just let the useless bastard go to Washington and attend parties. It's appears that's all he's good for. Earlier this week, Governor Bobby Jindal allowed a record 90th bill to become law without his signature. That's basically one bill every two days he's spent in office. The average is higher if you don't count weekends. Whether he's emulating Ray Nagin's "hands-off" approach or the late OK Allen's "yass-mistah-Huey" rubber stamp style, Bobby Jindal is clearly a mistake made by the collective electorate of Louisiana, of which I'm sad to say, I am a part of.

And speaking of pay raises... (nice segue, huh?)

Our Louisiana legislators found time at the end of this session to craft a bill giving fire fighters a minor pay increase. Guess who's threatened to veto it? Yep, Bobby J himself. While he ignores the pleas, cries and screams of thousands of his constituents to veto SB 672 which grants an unprecedented and undeserved 200% pay raise to our legislators, he wants to screw some of our first responders. What a guy!

Now before you start thinking that the legislature is finally doing something right by raising firefighter pay, get this: The raise doesn't go into effect until next year! That's right kids, the greedy hogs in Baton Rouge get instant gratification while our friends and neighbors who put their lives on the line have to do without for another year!

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but didn't we elect Bobby to "govern" our state? Doesn't that include signing or vetoing bills as needed? Hell, I can watch the bills float past, and I'd do the job for half of what BJ is paid. So why not let him run off to Washington with his new girlfriend John McCain? It's not like we'd miss him and he'd fit in perfectly with the rest of the lazy liars in our nation's capitol.

Apologies & Nudges

My apologies to State Senator Ann Duplessis, the Mercedes driving public servant whose Second District contains the still-devastated Lower Ninth Ward. Somewhere in a previous post I may have mentioned that she was the driving force behind SB 672, the little bill with the big payoff. It seems I may have blogged too soon.

As the cockroaches in Baton Rouge scurry from the light of day, one big bold mother-fucker has decided to remain in the spotlight no mater how big a shoe hangs above his head. That would be Republican Jim Tucker from District 86 on the Westbank.

The tubby Tucker has been moving and shaking behind the scenes for quite some time since this bill was introduced and his influence has not gone unnoticed. Of course, he hasn't been trying to stay below the radar, either. Before most of the public caught scent of SB 672, Wild Man Tucker was threatening Governor Bobby Jindal with congressional roadblocks if any pay raises were vetoed. In fact, the words "dead on arrival" were used regarding a number of legislations that Jindal wants passed.

During the House vote, Tucker could be seen huffing and puffing across the floor trying to assess the stance of his cohorts and finding that he was quickly losing support, he did a little subtraction from the overall raise and rushed the bill through before he lost any more votes. Now that's hustle!

On the day of the vote, Tucker took the podium and in a fit of Bushian "with-us-or-agin-us-ism" lambasted any and all who thought of voting against SB 672. He verbally lacerated bloggers for posting pictures of Annie's Mercedes online. Hey, it's the vehicle of a public servant. I pay for it and I'll post it wherever the hell I want Jimmy!

So again, my apologies to Annie. I realize now that she's simply the tool which Jimmy used to make our public servants richer. When you think about it, it's almost as if the Old South is still alive with Miss Annie working hard for whip-craking, slave-driver Jim on the old plantation, although Annie's more of a sharecropper here. And Massah Bobby has too much to gain in Cotton-Picking Politics-As-Usual here in Louisiana to do anything to stop it, even though he knows he's the only one who can.

So the upshot here is that instead of six-million dollars, we will only have to pay these douchebags 4.5-million dollars, (unless the feds approve themselves another raise,) for a part-time job. The raise will not fix our streets, enhance our schools, equip our first responders, or protect our lives and homes. It will make those kind souls across the world who have given so much to help us recover from Katrina think twice before they send us any more aid. It will make our state look so incompetent and inept that we will once again be known as the Haven of Corruption we once were. It will not "attract a better type of person" to public office as has been inanely stated by so many of the apparently poor performers we now have. It will simply attract a greedier class of thief.

It's up to you now Governor Bobby Jindal. You shouldn't need a nudge from me, but here it is: You can do the job we elected you to do or you can hide behind rhetorical prose and send this state further into disarray.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
-Edmund Burke

With great power there must also come great responsibility.
-Spider-Man

You're out!
-Any umpire after a poor performance by a ballplayer